http://tinyurl.com/p5ng8b Hong Chih-Kuo is a flamethrowing lefty who routinely gets his fastball into the mid-upper 90's with the Los Angeles Dodgers. These stats don't lie - Kuo is a great pitcher, when healthy. Of course, that's the problem - Kuo has suffered four surgeries on his throwing elbow. A closer look at his pitching mechanics follows after the jump... Kuo takes his throwing arm laterally behind his body quite a bit - better known as "reverse rotation." When he returns it to the throwing side, it causes a serious case of forearm flyout, which causes his olecranon process to slam into its fossa and do serious injury to the elbow. Kuo is pretty quick to the plate - 18-19 frames from maximial leg lift to footplant, which is good. However, he also has serious timing issues at footplant - check the still frame at the top of this article, or watch the animated GIF a few times. It's clear that Kuo has late forearm turnover and this causes unnecessary stress on his pitching elbow as it lays back in external rotation. Kuo has the "elbow lift" arm action, which is often referred to as a "short" arm action (and loved by many traditional scouts), causing him to horizontally flex the shoulder joint and stress the anterior portion of his shoulder. I don't know how many more surgeries Kuo can take, but if the definition of insanity is doing something the same way over and over again and expecting different results, Kuo might very well be on his way to the crazy house. --

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